Tulsa hires Ross Parmley as AD

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TULSA, Okla. -- Retiring Tulsa president Steadman Upham had intended to let his successor pick a new leader for the school's athletic department. But with so much going on, he decided it would be better if he made it known Ross Parmley would be in charge of Golden Hurricane sports on more than an interim basis.

Upham announced Thursday that Parmley would be Tulsa's new AD after serving in the role for three months, after Bubba Cunningham left for a similar job at North Carolina.

Upham said the school's governing board discussed Wednesday how much has happened with conference realignment talks and discussions with the NCAA and decided not to wait until after Upham's retirement in June to name a successor.

"It is quite clear that we needed stable and permanent leadership in the department in order to be a full participant in the discussions," Upham said.

"I'm very involved at the presidential level but the athletic directors are also very active in these discussions and I just felt it was better for our university to have a leader who had stability and roots, who could represent us in the discussions with greater credibility," he said. "We were very, very fortunate that we had Ross. He is ready and able to step in."

The 38-year-old Parmley first served as director of football operations starting in 2005, then was the school's associate athletic director for operations administration for four years. He became deputy athletic director a month before Cunningham left in mid-October.

"Our focus will be on the merger with Mountain West and Conference USA," Parmley said. "The changes at the BCS level will have an effect on that, but our focus will be how we better position ourselves to the merger of the Mountain West.

"There are great opportunities from television revenue to a more stable conference long term will be a great asset to us in the future."

Parmley added that he thought there was "a great possibility" that merger talks will involve all sports, not just football.

Parmley inherits a football program that has been booming recently with seven bowl appearances in the past nine years and a men's basketball team that hasn't made the NCAA tournament since 2003.

"We'll spend the rest of the semester trying to figure out ways to win conference championships in men's basketball, women's basketball," Parmley said. "Season ticket sales and attendance isn't where we want it to be but it isn't in football either. We have to continue as a department to put people in the stands and sell season tickets to our sports that really generate revenue. The state of our program is good. We want to get to great."

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press

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